“On Account of Color or Sex”:
A Historical Examination of the
Split between Black Rights and
Women’s Rights in the American
Equal Rights Association, 1866-1869
Whitney Hampson
Whitney is a junior history major with minors in women's studies and
theater. She is particularly interested in the history of nineteenth and
twentieth century American gender, sexuality, and relationships. After
graduate school, she plans on pursuing a Ph.D. and becoming a professor
of American history. This paper was originally written for Dr. Wang Xi's
Civil War and Reconstruction course in the fall of 2004.
In America, both the women’s rights movement and the black rights movement had their
roots in the abolitionist organizations of the early 1800s, and they shared many members,
goals, and methods. Despite these early commonalities, though, in the latter half of the
century the two movements faced each other as adversaries. Throughout the antebellum
and Civil War years, the movements had cultivated increasingly divergent goals and
tactics, particularly in regards to the issue of suffrage. By the late 1860s, the leaders of
the two movements disagreed completely on the relationship between their movement
and the existing political structure, particularly the Republican Party. They also held
divergent opinions on why either women or black people needed the vote and when
enfranchisement should occur. By the end of the decade, they would not even
acknowledge the legitimacy of each other’s goals.
Although this conflict was played out in many forums, it is most clear in the
proceedings of the American Equal Rights Association (AERA). This organization,
designed to combine the resources and energy of the black and women’s suffrage
movements, held three annual conferences after its initial meeting in 1866. These
meetings forced the leaders of the two movements to articulate their goals and the means
by which they were to achieve those goals. Eventually, the two movements had no
choice but to confront the reality of the growing rift between them. It was on the
convention floor in 1867 and 1868 that the conflict over the Republican Party and the
urgency of suffrage became clear, and the debate at the group’s final meeting in 1869
revealed that these fundamental disagreements had destroyed desire for cooperation and
even respect between the two movements. The collapse of the AERA is often viewed as
a symbol of the split between women’s suffragists and black suffragists. By examining
the proceedings of the AERA’s annual meetings and the events that influenced them, we
can discern both the actual and symbolic end of the two movements’ collaboration.
The abolition movement had a long history in America. It originated in the
tolerant Quaker communities of the North; as early as 1790, the Pennsylvania Abolition
Society was active and sending petitions to the United States Congress.1 The movement
continued to grow throughout the early republic, but it lacked cohesive organization.
That changed in the 1830s, when radical William Lloyd Garrison capitalized on the
upsurge in abolition involvement sparked by the Protestant revivals of the New Englandbased Second Great Awakening.2 Two years later, delegates from around the country
formed the American Anti-Slavery Society, a group that brought both radical and
moderate abolitionist groups together, to great success throughout that decade. The
organization split in 1840, however, over the role of women in the movement – a
foreshadowing of conflicts to come.3
With Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863 and the passage of
the 13th Amendment in 1865, many anti-slavery groups transformed themselves into
black rights groups. As activist leader Frederick Douglass said, “the work does not end
with the abolition of slavery, but only begins.”4 Even as the Civil War was still being
fought, activists were working to better the position of black people in America. Though
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fighting for various aspects of their economic and political equality, one of the earliest
goals was full citizenship. This, of course, included the right to vote. This became a
primary goal of many national groups: for example, the National Anti-Slavery Standard,
an abolitionist newspaper, changed its masthead to “No Reconstruction Without Negro
Suffrage.”5 By 1867, many of the leaders in the movement agreed that “slavery is not
abolished until the black man has the ballot.”6
Like the black rights movement, the women’s rights movement had its roots in
abolitionism. Feminists Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton first met as delegates
to the World Anti-Slavery Society convention in 1840, and the landmark Seneca Falls
Convention eight years later was sparked by their exclusion from that very anti-slavery
convention because of their sex. These “moral crusader feminists” were commonly
involved in other reform causes in the first half of the 1800s, including temperance and
anti-prostitution, and they understood women’s rights as a moral issue. 7 It was from their
work in abolitionism and other social reform movements that women’s rights leaders
learned the tactical skills necessary for politically advancing the cause of women.8 The
Declaration of Sentiments that came out of Seneca Falls was a synthesis of women’s
rights issues, such as better education, more economic and social independence, and
greater political autonomy, that had been gaining popularity since the 1830s.9 However,
in the divisive years immediately before and during Civil War, a single issue – suffrage –
increasingly became the focus of many high-profile women’s rights activists. 10 Like
former abolitionists now working for black equality, these women and men realized that
freedom in American was contingent on the ability to participate in the democratic
process.
53
The end of the war and the concomitant start of Reconstruction brought the issue
of black suffrage to the front of national politics. The ratification of the 13th Amendment,
which permanently abolished slavery, brought about the larger debate on the nature of
freedom in America and the as-yet undefined political status of millions of former slaves.
Congress first tried to approach this with the Civil Rights Bill in 1866, but President
Andrew Johnson’s veto of the bill over the issue of Congressional power led to passage
of the 14th Amendment.11 In a vast expansion of federal power, the amendment’s first
article established national citizenship and forbade states from denying citizens “equal
protection of the laws.” At the same time, the second article proportionally reduced
Congressional representation to states that denied the right to vote to any “male…
citizens of the United States.” In some ways, the 14th Amendment left women and black
people in a similar position: “citizens without political rights.”12 Black rights activists
objected to the implicit acceptance of racial discrimination in the second article, though
they strongly supported the equal protection language in the first.13 Women’s suffragists
viewed the amendment as a blatant affront to their previous cooperation with the
abolition and black rights movement.14 Its inclusion of “male” in the second article, the
first time that word had appeared in the U.S. Constitution, did not bode well for their
cause. To many inside and outside Congress, it appeared that it was simply a matter of
time until the momentum of legalized racial equality would next lead to the universal
enfranchisement of black men.15 The possibility of a similar victory for women remained
uncertain.
54
It was in this climate of both contention and progress that the American Equal
Rights Association was formed. Women’s rights activists proposed the group in order to
join the cause of gender equality with that of racial equality. The attempted fusion of the
two movements was both a nod to feminists’ participation in abolitionism and an
acknowledgement of the importance of the demand for equal rights, particularly
suffrage.16 Its founders were active in both the black and women’s rights movements of
the mid-nineteenth century: Lucy Stone and Susan B. Anthony proposed the idea at a
Boston anti-slavery meeting in January 1866, and within the next few months Anthony,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Frederick Douglass had founded the group and called for a
meeting that May.17 Leading activists and radicals from both movements – as the New
York Herald joked, “All the isms of the age” – gathered in New York City for the
founding meeting in May 1866.18 Although there were numerous offices and committees
within the group, the top leadership consisted of prominent figures involved in both
movements: Lucretia Mott was named president, Douglass, Stanton, and Theodore Tilton
(abolitionist, women’s right’s activist, and editor of reform journals The Independent and
The Golden Age) became the three vice-presidents, and Susan B. Anthony was voted in
as secretary.19 After two days of lecture and debate, the group unanimously adopted the
name American Equal Rights Association, and the AERA’s initial conference passed
with little incident.20
The conferences of 1867 and 1868 did not share that distinction. Over the course
of two contentious meetings – both held for one or two days in May of their respective
years – the debates between feminists and black rights activists focused on two of the
fundamental disagreements between the two movements. The first was the dependability
55
of the political establishment, especially political parties. Anger was still simmering in
both movements over the perceived betrayal of the 14th Amendment, which was in the
process of being ratified by the states during 1867 and 1868, and the conferences
revealed the different ways in which the two groups responded to that betrayal: feminist
groups moved away from the Republicans and in fact the entire party system, while the
black rights movement aligned itself even more closely.21 The second issue was based on
a question: why does a group of people need to have the vote? The different answers
given on behalf of black men and white women showed an underlying split in the way the
movements understood the function and necessity of suffrage.
After the initial meeting in 1866, members of the AERA had initiated a number of
state-based initiatives designed to bring the vote to both black people and women,
including a particularly contentious campaign in Kansas to remove both “male” and
“white” from the state constitutional requirements on suffrage. Few of these efforts had
been successful, but they had continuously forced activists to confront the political
problem of agitating for dual enfranchisement.22 It was becoming clear that the
Republican Party, even its Radical wing, was loath to endorse women’s suffrage. In a
letter from Kansas on the day of the 1867 convention, Lucy Stone fumed about the
campaign she was working on: “there is a plot to get the Republican party to drop the
word ‘male,’ and also to agree to canvass [campaign] only for the word ‘white.’”23
Experiences with these campaigns, coupled with the blame that many feminists placed on
“the dominant party for its retrogressive legislation” that was the 14th Amendment, had
driven many working for women’s suffrage away from the Republicans.24 Although
women’s suffragists to some extent used the Democrats for legislative support, the party
56
did not actually endorse women’s suffrage, but trumpeted the cause in order to discredit
Republican support for black suffrage.25 The women’s rights movement had essentially
disassociated itself from the political system – woman, said Stanton, “must not put her
trust in man.”26
In contrast to the feminists’ actions, the black rights movement had responded to
the 14th Amendment by falling more in line with the Republican Party. After the
elections of 1866, Republicans had become more vocal in their support for black
suffrage. Former abolitionists now united with the powerful Radicals in the party’s left
wing.27 What was critical about this divide was not that black suffrage workers became
Republican, but that they engaged with the system at all. This move both indicated and
enhanced the political clout of the movement. Even the existence of the AERA itself was
a testimony to this: its creation in some measure was an effort on the part of feminists to
take advantage of the political power that the black rights movement was now enjoying.28
However, black suffrage activists increasingly worried that attempts to combine the two
movements would deplete the support for both, especially black suffrage, which in 1867
and ‘68 looked to be an approaching reality. 29 Many in the black rights movement
increasingly perceived their goal as easily attainable and women’s suffrage as a noble yet
far-fetched prospect in the Reconstruction years.30 With political and public opinion on
their side, black rights activists sought increasingly to move towards the Republican
Party and to distance themselves from the women’s rights groups without overtly
severing ties.
The issue of political party alignment and the growing confidence of black rights
advocates was illustrated clearly in an exchange at the 1868 conference. Frederick
57
Douglass, who spoke on behalf of the black suffrage movement on the difference in
urgency between the black and women’s votes, gave a speech that was perhaps more
insightful (and cutting) than he had intended. The campaign for women’s suffrage, he
said, “meets nothing but ridicule,” but a black man demanding his vote is met with “the
Ku-klux and Regulators [who] hunt and slay the offending” petitioner. The critical word,
“ridicule,” revealed the growing sentiment that women’s suffrage was, or at least was
perceived to be, a fantasy. In response to this subtle insult, feminist Olympia Brown
quickly turned the debate into a denouncement of Republicans. Avoiding voicing
support for the Democratic Party, Brown criticized the Republican Party, stating that it
“cares for nothing but party!” Lucy Stone, too, claimed that the party was “false to
principle unless it protected women as well as colored men” in their voting rights.
Douglass stood staunchly in support of Republicans throughout, praising the party for
admitting states that had “constitutions guaranteeing negro suffrage forever.”31 The
exchange highlighted the growing rift between the two factions over cooperation with the
Republican Party, which was augmented by the strain caused by the increasing power of
the black suffrage movement without a simultaneous rise in support for women’s
suffrage.
The second prevalent theme of the AERA conventions in 1867 and 1868 was the
debate over what the vote would do for black people or women, a question which
determined the timing of granting suffrage – that is, whether black people (implicitly
men) or women (implicitly white) were entitled to the vote first. On one side stood those
who called for support for the immediate enfranchisement of black men. Black men were
often portrayed as having earned their citizenship and suffrage through their participation
58
in the Union Army, and suffrage supporters often used the language of the Constitution to
argue that giving black men the vote was part of America’s destiny as a great
civilization.32 More importantly, black suffrage was not only seen as a step in the
direction of equality, but also a “matter of life or death.”33 Only if black men in the South
had the vote could they protect themselves from the injustices being done to them in the
immediate aftermath of the Civil War. The black man, said Frederick Douglas, “needs
suffrage to protect his life and property, and to ensure him respect and education.”34
Black male suffrage was portrayed as a political right and a physical necessity.
On the other side of the debate were those who supported women’s suffrage first
or concurrent with black suffrage. Women’s suffragists, like black suffragists, used
appeals to the democratic foundations of the country, protesting “in the name of
republican freedom” that women were not represented in their own government.35
Women voters were portrayed as a positive moral influence, whose political influence
could “save the country.”36 It was argued that the reform spirit of the nation provided the
perfect atmosphere in which to call for universal suffrage, and many women’s suffrage
supporters feared that it would be many years “ere the constitutional door will again be
opened.”37 In addition to the redeeming qualities of women, some argued for their
suffrage on the basis of perceived undesirable qualities of black men. It was common
among women’s rights groups to hear insults about the trustworthiness or abilities of
black men to support a family as a justification for giving black women the vote.38 Others
claimed that giving poor or uneducated black men the vote before educated middle-class
white women would be degrading or humiliating to the latter.39 Women (or sometimes
just white women) deserved the vote not only because of their rights and positive moral
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influence, but because their education and status made them more desirable voters than
black men.
At the 1867 convention, the issue of whose suffrage should come first was the
subject of a heated debate, which started when each side tried to argue its case by calling
a prominent black woman to the podium.40 It was the free-born and well-educated
Frances Watkins Harper who took the side of the black suffragists, echoing her
sentiments from the previous conference that it was the racism of white women, even her
fellow activists, that was a threat to black equality.41 She downplayed the necessity of
lifting middle-class white women “out of their airy nothings and selfishness,” and
emphasized that it was black people who need the vote now – even if it was only black
men at first.42 Sojourner Truth, the illiterate former slave and gifted orator, responded to
Harper by speaking of the idleness and arrogance of black men. She proclaimed that
suffrage for women would bring them economic independence, declaring, “When we get
our rights we shall not have to come to you [black men] for money.”43 She even stated
that “White women are a great deal smarter, and know more than colored women,”
although it was because all the latter could do was “go out washing” – implying that it
was a lack of education, not intelligence, that plagued black women.44 This issue of
education led to an argument between George T. Downing and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
Downing demanded of Stanton if she opposed black enfranchisement if women did not
also get the vote; she replied that without female suffrage, the “highest type of manhood”
should have the vote, not the “incoming tide of ignorance, poverty, and vice” – in other
words, uneducated immigrant and black men.45 The conference, mired in controversy, did
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nothing but adopt a low-key resolution stating that suffrage provided “self-protection,
self-reliance and self-respect.”46
Thus, at the 1867 and 1868 AERA conferences, a clear division formed between
advocates of immediate black suffrage and those who demanded the vote for women
before or at the same time as for black males. Certainly, this was not simply a division
between white women and black men. Many white women thought that black men, once
enfranchised, would be stronger allies than white men in the fight for sexual equality;
there were black men like Charles Remond who demanded the same rights for his wife
and sister as for himself; and black women found themselves in a difficult position in
either camp.47 The activists were divided less by race and gender, and more by their
understanding of why people needed or deserved suffrage. These groups also diverged
over their opinion of the Republican Party: female suffragists wanted nothing to do with
the Republicans (or really even the Democrats, except when they needed legislators to
introduce bills), while those fighting for black rights saw the Republican Party as
important to their movement’s growing power and support. These conflicts over
ideology and action set the stage for the explosive final conference of the short-lived
American Equal Rights Association.
The 1869 AERA convention again occurred in May in New York City. The
meeting was called by Stanton and Anthony, who had recently aligned themselves with
George Francis Train, the racist women’s rights supporter and newspaper editor.48 The
women were intent on healing old wounds from the first conferences and rallying support
for a new project: a proposed 16th Amendment that would give the vote to women.49
However, another issue was also on the table, although many feminists would have
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preferred it not be. The 15th Amendment, granting suffrage to black men, had passed in
Congress in February of that year, and by May it was in the process of being ratified by
the necessary states.50 Despite feminists’ attempts at promoting their 16th Amendment,
the bulk of the convention was to be spent in a blaze of arguments over the 15th. The
dispute over whether or not to support the new amendment revealed the lack of esteem
and loss of a cooperative spirit between the two sides. The women’s suffragists applied
racist language to their arguments against the amendment. In return, black suffrage
advocates belittled the cause of the feminists by repeatedly arguing for the amendment by
emphasizing the importance of black male enfranchisement over women’s suffrage. This
conflict, which was rooted not just in ideas but also in each movement’s opinion of the
other, was the breaking point of the AERA and the two groups’ cooperation.
Feminists, who by and large opposed the 15th Amendment because it did not
allow for female suffrage, frequently insulted the black race, particularly black men, in
their arguments against it. Over the past few years, some of the leading women’s
movement leaders had been gaining a decidedly racist subtext to their messages.51 That
undercurrent of thought was obvious at the AERA. Sometimes it was disguised as
“educated suffrage.”52 Susan B. Anthony stated, “if you will not give… suffrage to the
entire people, give it to the most intelligent first.”53 At other points, it was in the form of
insulting black men. Paulina W. Davis called black men in the South “a race of tyrants”
and proclaimed, “the black women are more intelligent than the men, because they have
learned something from their mistresses.”54 Finally, there was overt racism from women
like Stanton. Although she was reprimanded for an earlier comment about the danger of
giving the vote first to “Patrick and Sambo and Hans and Ung Tung,” she repeated at the
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conference that she objected to “allowing ignorant negroes and foreigners to make
laws.”55 These racist remarks were present in many of the women suffragists’ speeches.
Black suffragists, not unexpectedly, objected strongly to this kind of language
being used among supposed defenders of equality. However, their own arguments
contained implications that were offensive to women’s suffragists. Statements about the
urgency of the need for the black vote had, by this time, been transformed into assertions
that black suffrage was more important than female suffrage; this allegation was
infuriating to many who were devoting their lives to women’s rights. The importance of
black over women’s issues was implied when speakers attributed current national
conflicts to race relations only, not gender. Douglass, after listing off numerous
tribulations that black people faced, was asked if they were not also true for black
women. “Yes, yes, yes,” he cried impatiently, “it is true of the black woman, but not
because she is a woman, but because she is black.”56 In some exchanges, the primacy of
race problems was stated overtly. Frances Watkins Harper said that with issues where “it
was a question of race, she let the lesser question of sex go.”57 In their arguments for the
necessity of immediate black emancipation, black suffragists downplayed the importance
and legitimacy of the women’s movement.
The strong negative feelings on both sides were present even from the very first
debate of the 1869 conference. Upon the conclusion of Stanton’s introductory message,
Stephen Foster quickly denounced her as a racist. 58 Douglass followed by recounting the
specific racist remarks she had made. She had used “certain names, such as ‘Sambo,’”
and had made offensive comparisons between “the gardener, and the bootblack, and the
daughters of Jefferson and Washington.” His main point, though, was that although he
63
was “in favor of woman’s suffrage,” it was not matched in urgency by the need for the
black vote. A woman, he claimed, had “10,000 modes of grappling with her difficulties,”
while black men had none. Susan B. Anthony responded hotly by declaring, “If
intelligence, justice, and morality are to have precedence in the Government, let the
question of women be brought up first and that of the negro last.”59
The opening exchange set the tone for all the rest that followed; the conference
revealed that each movement no longer respected the other’s legitimacy. Much of the
women’s suffrage leadership was clearly no longer interested in fighting to enfranchise
men whom they considered inferior. At the same time, few black suffrage activists could
see the point in devoting their resources to a movement that they perceived as lacking in
both support and relevance. Despite many of the delegates’ desire to focus on what Lucy
Stone called the “middle principle” or common ground, without even the foundation of
mutual respect to stand on, the organization could not continue to function. The final
action of the AERA was a weak resolution that supported the 15th Amendment but
expressed “profound regret that Congress has not submitted a parallel amendment for the
enfranchisement of women.”60 After the concluding remarks on the third day, the
American Equal Rights Association disbanded; the attempt to fuse the two movements
had failed.
In the immediate aftermath of the AERA’s final conference, suffrage workers
founded two competing groups. Stanton, Anthony, and other former abolitionists created
the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) in a meeting two days after the
AERA convention. The group focused purely on women’s enfranchisement, “separate
64
and apart from the question of equal rights and manhood suffrage” – that is to say, black
manhood suffrage. 61 The all-female NWSA did not involve the issue of race in its
mission.62 Its tenets evolved into the more popular school of feminism, and the group has
been called the “first national feminist organization in the United States.”63 At the same
time, those who believed that black and women’s suffrage were not mutually exclusive,
including Harper and Stone, formed the American Woman Suffrage Association
(AWSA). Its members continued to work for equal rights for both races and sexes, in the
more traditional vein of the abolitionist movement.64 The AWSA was not as militant and
thus was less successful in attracting members or attention. Though a few women like
Sojourner Truth were involved in both groups, most activists chose one side and did not
budge. The impasse continued for twenty years, until 1890 when the two groups
combined as the National American Woman Suffrage Association. However, this
organization was guided much more strongly by Stanton and Anthony’s brand of
women’s suffrage than Stone and Harper’s, and the issue of race faded from popular
feminism.65
The failure of the black rights movement and the women’s rights movement to
remain in collaboration was due to the fundamental differences that had evolved between
them in the 1850s and 1860s. These disagreements, which centered on the issue of
suffrage, concerned both action and ideas. Feminists who felt betrayed by the
Republican Party could not effectively work with black suffragists who saw cooperation
with that party as an important step in achieving their goals. The two groups also could
not agree on why, and thus when, women and black people should get the right to vote;
black rights activists pointed to the dire situation in the Reconstruction South and claimed
65
black suffrage was the only solution, while women suffragists argued for their positive
moral influence and refused to accept that uneducated black men would be enfranchised
before they were. These strong divisions led to the heated arguments that produced the
hostile feelings so apparent in the 1869 AERA convention. Female suffragists brought
racist language into their arguments, while black suffragists belittled the need for
women’s enfranchisement in their appeals for their own cause. In the end, the leaders of
these once-united movements could no longer respect each other’s opinions or work. By
the end of the final conference of the AERA, the split between the movements for
women’s rights and black rights was complete.
1
Joseph J. Ellis, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation (New York: Vintage Books, 2000), 83.
James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (New York: Ballantine Books, 1989), 8.
3
Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty! An American History, Volume 1: To 1877 (New York: W. W. Norton & Co.,
2005), 453.
4
Frederick Douglass, qtd. in Eric Foner, A Short History of Reconstruction, 1863-1877 (New York: Harper
& Row, 1990), 34.
5
National Anti-Slavery Standard, 1865, qtd. in E. Foner, Short History, 31.
6
Frederick Douglass, qtd. in ibid., 30-31.
7
Alice S. Rossi, ed., The Feminist Papers: From Adams to de Beauvoir (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1973), 249.
8
Paula Baker, “The Domestication of Politics: Women and American Political Society, 1780-1920” in
Ellen Carol DuBois and Vicki L. Ruiz, eds, Unequal Sisters: A Multicultural Reader in U.S. Women’s
History (New York: Routledge, 1990), 74.
9
“Selections from the History of Woman Suffrage: ‘The Seneca Falls Convention’” in Feminist Papers,
419.
10
Rossi, Feminist Papers, 281; P. Baker, “Domestication of Politics,” 74.
11
E. Foner, Short History, 113-115.
12
Ellen Carol DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women’s Movement in
America, 1848-1869 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978), 62.
13
Ibid., 65.
14
Clinton, Other Civil War, 93.
15
E. Foner, Short History, 117-120.
16
Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America
(New York: William Morrow and Co., 1984), 65
17
DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage, 63; Wilbert L. Jenkins, Climbing Up to Glory: A Short History of
African Americans during the Civil War and Reconstruction (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, Inc.,
2002), 217.
18
New York Herald, 1866, qtd. in Philip S. Foner, ed., Frederick Douglass on Women’s Rights (Westport,
CT: Greenwood Press, 1976), 28.
19
“Memorial of the American Equal Rights Association to the Congress of the United States,” printed in
the National Anti-Slavery Standard, 22 December 1866, in Frederick Douglass, 82.
20
DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage, 64.
2
66
21
Ibid., 73-75.
Ibid., 65-66.
23
Letter from Lucy Stone to Unnamed Recipient, 9 May 1867, in Feminist Papers, 439.
24
DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage, 67.
25
Ibid., 76.
26
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, qtd. in E. Foner, 115.
27
DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage, 75.
28
Ibid., 64.
29
Ibid., 71.
30
Nell Irvin Painter, “Voices of Suffrage: Sojourner Truth, Frances Watkins Harper and the Struggle for
Woman Suffrage” in Jean H. Baker, ed., Votes for Women: The Struggle for Suffrage Revisited (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2002), 50.
31
“Proceedings of the American Equal Rights Association Convention in Cooper Institute, New York, May
14, 1868” in Frederick Douglass, 84.
32
E. Foner, Short History, 50-51.
33
“Proceedings… May 14, 1868,” 84.
34
Ibid.
35
“Memorial,” 82.
36
“Proceedings of the American Equal Rights Association Convention, Steinway Hall, New York City,
May 12, 1869” in Frederick Douglass, 89.
37
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, qtd. in E. Foner, Short History, 115.
38
Painter, “Voices of Suffrage,” 47-48.
39
Ibid., 44.
40
One might imagine that since the AERA looked at both sex and race, it could be seen as the ultimate
organization for black women; however, due to inherited racism and sexism from the early abolition
movement, only five black women ever served as officers or as speakers in the whole existence of the
organization. DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage, 69.
41
Giddings, When and Where I Enter, 66.
42
Frances Smith Foster, “Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911),” in Darlene Clark Hine, ed., Black
Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia (Brooklyn, NY: Carlson Publishing, 1993), 532-37, qtd. in
Painter, “Voices of Suffrage,” 47.
43
“Address to the American Equal Rights Association, Delivered by Sojourner Truth, New York City, May
9, 1967” in Janey Weinhold Montgomery, A Comparative Analysis of the Rhetoric of Two Negro Women
Orators – Sojourner Truth and Frances E. Watkins Harper (Hays, KS: Fort Hays Kansas State College,
1968), 99.
44
“Address… by Sojourner Truth,” 98.
45
“The American Equal Rights Association: Day Two,” in Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and
Matilda Joslyn Gage, eds, History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 2: 1861-1876 (Rochester, NY: Privately
Published, 1881), 214-216, http://www.alexanderstreet6.com/wasm/wasmrestricted/doctext/S10010055D0004.htm (accessed 5 December 2004).
46
“Resolution Adopted at First Annual Meeting, American Equal Rights Association, New York City, May
9-10, 1867” in Frederick Douglass, 83.
47
Giddings, When and Where I Enter, 68n.
48
Painter, “Voices of Suffrage,” 50-51.
49
DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage, 185-187.
50
E. Foner, Short History, 189.
51
Painter, “Voices of Suffrage,” 47.
52
Giddings, When and Where I Enter, 67.
53
“Proceedings… May 12, 1869,” 87.
54
Ibid., 89.
55
“Editorial Correspondence, Washington, January 22. 1869),” in Stanton, Anthony, and Gage, eds,
History, vol. 2, 353-355, http://www.alexanderstreet6.com/wasm/wasmrestricted/doctext/S10010055D0008.htm (accessed 5 December 2004); “Proceedings… May 12, 1869,” 90.
56
“Proceedings… May 12, 1869,” 87.
57
Ibid., 90.
22
67
58
DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage, 187.
“Proceedings… May 12, 1869,” 86-87.
60
“Equal Rights,” New York Times, 14 May 1869, qtd. in DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage, 188-189.
61
“Meeting of the National Woman Suffrage Association,” New York Times, 18 May 1869, qtd. in ibid.,
189-190.
62
Painter, “Voices of Suffrage,” 51.
63
DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage, 190.
64
E. Foner, Short History, 193.
65
Painter, “Voices of Suffrage,” 52-53.
59
68